These Are Times for Unity
By Manuel E. Yepe

A CubaNews translation by Mary Todd.
Edited by Walter Lippmann.

This year, July 26th, Cuba’s National Day of Rebellion, marked a moment of tremendous importance for Cuban-Venezuelan solidarity.  The people and the media had expected that Hugo Chávez and Fidel Castro would hug each other—the first such public demonstration since the latter’s four years of convalescence—but this didn’t happen.  Even so, a series of circumstances made the date an extremely important one in the annals of the revolutionary relations between Havana and Caracas.

The 1st Cuban-Venezuelan Presidential Summit Meeting, which examined the results of the 2nd High-Level Meeting of Cuban-Venezuelan Economic Unity (held in Caracas July 15-19) was held on a tourist island a little over 350 kilometers [200 miles] from Havana on July 25 and 26.  In it, the two countries agreed prioritize 139 short- and medium-term economic cooperation projects, out of a total of 370 which were evaluated. The strategic goal was advancing toward the economic unity of the two countries, based on the principles of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA).

President Chávez didn’t attend, because, “as always, he chose to remain on the front line of combat, leading his people in defense of our besieged Bolivarian Revolution,” as Venezuelan Vice President Rafael Ramírez, whom the Bolivarian President appointed to head the delegation from his country, explained.

Threats of aggression by the number-one superpower in the world and its inability to pull itself out of the serious situation into which its irresponsible militarism—racking up defeat after defeat—has led it, presage serious events for mankind, and Venezuela is seriously threatened with aggression.

Obviously acting on Washington’s orders, Alvaro Uribe, outgoing Colombian President whose term expires on August 7 this year, claimed at the Organization of American States that there were 85 camps of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and National Liberation Army (ELN) guerrillas, with at least 1500 men, in Venezuela.

Caracas energetically denied the accusation, which has no basis in fact—among other reasons, because the Colombian Government itself admits that FARC and ELN control 30 percent of Colombia’s territory, and sending so many forces outside the combat area would go against even the most elementary military principles.

With that accusation, the outgoing Colombian President—who will go down in his country’s history as a servile tool of the superpower against Latin-American unity, a man who handed his country over to a clique of corrupt military men, to paramilitary forces at the service of the oligarchy and of the drug dealers dependent on the U.S. market—created a pretext like all the others that the United States usually invents for its acts of military intervention.

Colombia’s denunciation was made to serve as a pretext for military intervention aimed at overthrowing the Bolivarian government—or, at least, dealing it a body blow in the upcoming election.

This isn’t an isolated or happenstance act of manipulation.  Many actions have taken place recently that are aimed at the same goal.  Not placed in chronological order or order of importance, they include the establishment of seven U.S. military bases in Colombia; the establishment of U.S. bases on Aruba and Curaçao, very near the Venezuelan coast; the establishment of U.S. bases in El Salvador and Honduras; and, now, the sending of at least 7000 Marines with all kinds of armaments to Costa Rica, while the Fourth Fleet remains threateningly just off the Atlantic coast of South America.

The maneuvers designed to promote discord and confrontations among the South American nations do not promote the interests and aspirations of the Colombian people.  Rather, they serve the geopolitical interests of the hegemonic power, whose maxim is “divide and conquer,” seeking to weaken the unity among the Latin-American peoples as a means for subjugating them to its rule.

Cuba has always considered that the proliferation of U.S. bases in Colombia endangers regional stability and threatens the sovereignty of neighboring countries.

“We struggle for peace and harmony among our sister nations, and we will always promote that goal.  But, in case of any problem, nobody should have any doubts about which side Cuba will be on,” Cuban President Raúl Castro said in the closing session of the 1st Cuban-Venezuelan Presidential Summit Meeting.

For the sake of Latin-American unity against this new U.S. maneuver, it is to be hoped that the new Colombian President, who will be inaugurated in Bogotá on August 7, will demonstrate enough autonomy to set goals of peace, both internally and as part of an independent Latin-American and international policy, not allowing the United States to attach strings or dictate terms.

Unity is the only option Latin America has for survival. 


July 2010